It is easy to open a bag of loose cattle mineral and pour it into mineral feeders or a trough. Yet many beef producers don’t realize the importance of providing essential minerals and vitamins to their beef cow herd on a regular basis. That’s why I encourage people to choose a well-formulated cattle mineral and manage it throughout the entire year. As a result, they promote good mineral intake in beef cows, which contributes to good cow herd vitality and reproduction.
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The funny thing is that managing and achieving good mineral intake is harder than opening a bag of mineral, because there are many factors that deal with cattle mineral intake. Some of the natural reasons are mineral palatability, forage quality and water quality.
For instance, I recommended that an identically formulated 2:1 breeder cattle mineral with essential garlic oil be fed at two cow-calf operations — a 200-head Angus-Simmental cow herd and a 100-head Charolais cow operation. The red cow herd ate the cattle mineral like candy, while the white herd didn’t touch it.
A simple pasture walk showed me and the first producer that his cow herd with the sweet tooth could be narrowed down to a dozen animals that ate the mineral (with distillers grains) like it was ground barley. This producer ended up adding about one-third salt to this cattle mineral. Within a few days, he achieved an acceptable three to four ounces (80-100 grams) per head per day mineral intake.
The smaller Charolais herd presented more of a challenge. I even took a sample of pasture grass and a bottle of drinking water to test both for sodium (Na), which is known to naturally curtail mineral intake. Low sodium was found in both returned analyses. The only thing that I can surmise is that the second producer fed a low-phosphorus (four per cent) in the winter, compared to the current 1:1 mineral with 12 per cent calcium and 12 per cent phosphorus. The latter was high P, which tends to be unpalatable to cattle and might explain their current lack of interest. Otherwise, I have many cow herds on this same mineral without incident.
It comes down to management
Aside from some of these natural reasons that control animal mineral intake, I believe many mineral consumption problems that fail to achieve a good target of 80-100 grams of cattle mineral per day are often man-made. Some of these reasons are failure to calculate the correct amount of mineral to feed in the first place, not putting mineral in a suitable mineral feeder, and one of the biggest reasons of all — no routine to manage mineral consumption.
For example, a 200 cow-calf operation might put out loose mineral every three days. We can then calculate the correct number of bags that are need by using the following calculations:
1. 200 cows x 100 g = 2,000 g or 20 kg.
2. 20 x 3 days = 60 kg.
3. Each bag = 25 kg.
5. Put out three bags.
I also recommended that mineral feeders should be located where cattle will make frequent visits. Moving mineral stations closer to water sources generally increases mineral intake by cows, while moving feeders farther back will usually decrease mineral intake. Plus, it’s always a good idea to have enough mineral feeders for the whole herd — one standard goal is one feeding station for every 30 to 40 cows.
Well-placed mineral feeders should always be accessible to all cows, yet the mineral should be protected from rain, wind, sunshine and sometimes the cows themselves (re: defecating in it). I am the biggest fan of a two- or three-compartment durable heavy-duty plastic feeder with a fixed metal bar in the centre, which secures a weatherproof rubber flap. There are notches moulded into the base to bolt it down on top of a truck tire and keep it out of water and mud. Two bags of mineral and one bag of salt can be poured separately or mixed into the compartments. I am not a fan of wooden boxes, oil drums cut in half or empty molasses lick tub barrels.
About 10 years ago, I got a call from a veterinarian who believed his local 300-cow herd client had a copper deficiency. He asked me to formulated a cattle mineral with “extra bio-available copper.” During our conversation, the vet had absolutely no information about the cattle’s mineral consumption, yet I did learn the cattle’s owners visited their herd about every three weeks. It’s a good testimony that good mineral management was probably needed more than my new high-copper cattle mineral.
